


heavenly breezes waved

by valkyriesun



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, First Meetings, Hook-Up, Relationship Study, enemies to fwb to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyriesun/pseuds/valkyriesun
Summary: She’d later deny it, never one to be caught off guard, but Sarah jumps out of her skin when two ice-cold hands graze her shoulders.Fortunately for her, only a dead man would dare make his way into this dilapidated excuse of a vessel, and it’s just the one she’s been waiting for.
Relationships: Miss Sarah Fortune/Pyke
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	heavenly breezes waved

She’d later deny it, never one to be caught off guard, but Sarah jumps out of her skin when two ice-cold hands graze her shoulders. 

Fortunately for her, only a dead man would dare make his way into this dilapidated excuse of a vessel, and it’s just the one she’s been waiting for.

Tired hands don’t move, callouses rough but not unfamiliar on her shoulders, and Sarah sighs, arching into the firm touch not unlike a contented cat. She doesn’t purr. Not yet, at least. 

It’d been a few weeks since the wraith—sometimes a man, sometimes a monster—had been home last. It’s comedic, she thinks, their little affair is—nobody knows of her regular trysts with the man who once vowed to be her killer. How he’d come to be a staple conquest in her life, how she quickly became the only man she saw regularly. From the outside, they’d sound like lovers.

(Sarah’s eyes glaze over and she loses her place on the page she’s reading as she lingers on the thought a moment too long.)

Pyke leaves often. He has things to attend to. Sarah doesn’t doubt it. She has a duty to uphold in the same vein, tracking down one man in particular whose name has no place in her mind as she waits for Pyke to return, reading the heaps of old maps and privateer novels collected by the latter. 

Some nights, like this very one, as Sarah makes her way well off her crew’s radar, shifting through the scum of Bilgewater where she wouldn’t be seen dead otherwise, she gets to thinking. A bad habit, in her opinion, when it comes to this kind of thing, but she does it anyway. She thinks about love, and how the aforementioned thing never seemed to manifest in her life until a certain man found his way to her, fully prepared to slice her throat open and leave her for the sharks. How she’d come to love his low, gravelly voice that sounds as if he’s eternally speaking from below the water’s surface, and his cold, clammy skin that never fails to make her shiver. 

It’s weird, she thinks, finding that love can manifest so late in her life, just when she thought she’d missed all her many chances. Sarah is nothing if not clever, but her cleverness is stumped by one small inconvenience: not once has she experienced the attentiveness Pyke grants her. It’s not the focus of one entranced by simple looks, something Sarah’s far too familiar with. No, it’s different. And she loves it. 

So when she and Pyke meet later after spending weeks apart, far too long for any person to stay sane without honest company, Sarah relishes in the way he treats her like a lover. She enjoys being wanted—not lusted over, like how those mangy men treat her, tripping over themselves onto the filthy streets while staring and shouting obscenities at her as if she’s butcher meat in a pound. No, she likes how Pyke looks at her. As if he’s seen something rare in her every time they meet, as if she’s got something on her person he’s yet to find in anyone else. Like she’s his favorite. 

(He’s her favorite too.)

“Why a simple ‘hello’ is so beyond you,” Sarah breaks the silence, moving only to accommodate the man’s body, now corporeal and firm behind her. (It’s an awkward dampness, the press of his skin against her, but so uniquely him that she’s grown fond of it.) “I’ll never understand.”

He just hums.

“It wouldn’t kill you to come in on your own two legs, would it now?”

He chuckles at that. “Sure it wouldn’t. Not much can.” Making no move to get the woman off his lap, Pyke snakes a hand down her side, stopping at the hem of her bottoms, and rubs sigils into the flesh of her hip.

Sarah can tell he’s exhausted, with how slow his fingers move on her. Loathe as she is to admit it, she’s much the same. Duties have her worn like a rag, not eccentric as she’s like to be. But the way she arches when he massages an especially sore part of her thigh—he reads her like gospel.

Before very long she’s facing and straddling Pyke, slipping his bandanna down and around his neck with practiced ease. He’s scarred, so scarred, and Sarah’s hands ghost over the angry raised skin of his lips before winding behind his head, pulling him closer and closer ’til they’re forehead to forehead, nearly eye to eye. 

Pyke’s eyes fall shut, and Sarah takes note—not for the first time, nor the last—of how extraordinarily handsome he is. She praises his jaw first, strong and pronounced, with kisses that take her to the column of his neck. How lucky she is to have come across this dirty sea dog, Sarah doesn’t want to know. But if she hadn’t let him in that night—if she had fought a fair fight, she might have just ended up another name crossed off the list, another lifeless captain at the bottom of the sea.

She hugs him a little bit tighter at the thought.

Pyke’s a fair bit larger than her, even with Sarah fully on his lap—only by the additional height of her knees is she able to rival him. She finds his lips again and and all but purrs when she feels him thread his fingers in her hair, using that purchase to angle her mouth the way he likes. It’s overwhelming, the way Pyke’s touch makes her feel—makes her want to give and give without him having to ask, makes her want to be used—a rare and dangerous feeling. She wants to keep feeling like it.

Sarah breaks away, breathing hard and hot. Pyke’s chest doesn’t heave—she has to remind herself often that he doesn’t actually breathe—but her attention is immediately caught. His skin is cold and salty from seawater when Sarah moves to taste it, and the way he sighs when she does means the stark difference in temperature is not lost on him. The rest of her body not busy laving his neck with attention moves on pure instinct; her hands, eager to please, massage the skin of his pecs, over his shoulders, and down his arms before intertwining with his own. Her chest she accentuates as she worms closer to him, relishing in his reaction as he feels firsthand the evidence of a growing suspicion: she’s well and truly naked underneath her sleepwear. And last, but not least, are her hips, which grind purposefully down on Pyke’s, the touch made modest only by the thin layers of clothing still separating the two. 

Just as she’s about had her fill of his little sighs and moans—“Sarah.” 

Finishing up a mark on his collarbone, Sarah pulls back. For an extra moment she smilies at her handiwork; she hasn’t lost her touch for this kind of thing. But before, she watches as his eyes catch something over her shoulder. She follows his gaze to the bedside table where a two glasses of rum sit, untouched and inviting. Pyke raises a brow, and Sarah explains.

“Those were for when you got here.” She reaches dumbly for one, and she obliges him, handing him the other. “Would’ve done the trick for me to get you in the mood if you weren't already.”

A smirk. “You’re right,” He stares into the glass, as if looking for signs in the swirl of liquor. “It would’ve. Real easy.”

Before she can move to sip her own, Pyke’s kissing her, and Sarah all but melts at his touch. She’s shocked by the sudden taste of liquor in the kiss, spice rich on her tongue, and is further surprised as some of Pyke’s drink makes its way into her mouth. Too surprised to do anything else, she downs it, breaking away to swallow, throat burning all the while. A pleasant warmness settles in her stomach. Satisfaction. 

Behind her, Pyke puts their drinks back on the table, maneuvering himself to press Sarah rightly onto the bed. Eye contact is a must-have, apparently, because he doesn’t break it for as long as he’s got her in his sights. It’s endearing, Sarah thinks, if not chilling. He is what he always is. She is prey. 

“I was about to say,” She starts, eyes still locked. “We didn’t need the drinks, you beast.”

“Who needs anything,” It’s rhetoric, distracting Sarah from the hand snaking up the front of her shirt. “It’s all about _taking_ what you want.”

* * *

Pyke is nocturnal. One’d think it hardly matters, really, what with Bilgewater being what it is—even the brightest summer afternoon is plagued with eternal fog and the foul stench of sweat and fish guts. But years of living on the sea has taught Pyke most everything he needs to know about fishing, and he’s taken advantage of the fact that the sweeping torches of the night are no match for the sun’s penetrating rays. One too many times he’d lost a fat chunk of prey to the dreadful night, helpless to watch as the beasts sunk further below the surface and disappeared like ghosts under the torches that burn like matchsticks.

Had he any experience manning a ship, the captain of the weaker vessel Pyke’s tracking might’ve docked 'til morning, at what point he might’ve been able to make out the shape of a beast in their waters, low and shady, before making his way to safety. But no, he retires to his quarters well before daylight, opting to sleep on a ship anchored only in the loose hold of the sea floor.

Pyke has the man’s head before long. It’s not a clean cut, the type he’d prefer to make, but his harpoon isn’t fashioned for cutting up fat bastards like this sad excuse of a captain, hence the jagged lines of red that peel off from the bottom flaccidly. He smiles, entertaining one of his rarer sadistic daydreams: It’s morning. A crew member nervously peers into his captain’s quarters, having not heard word to raise anchors yet. He’d see first the pool of red that’s soaked the sheets below, then the headless corpse Pyke’s left fashioned in his captainly garb. Serves him fucking right.

Before it can dry, Pyke scrawls a quick warning above the bed with the captain’s blood—‘NO MORE CAPTAINS’. He smiles a bit at his handiwork, and leaves without sparing a glance at the rapidly cooling body of the dead captain, sinking back into the waters from whence he came. 

Such is routine. Ages ago, Pyke found himself reluctant to give up the life of the man he’d once been—he’d often check out old friends and old haunts, living vicariously through watching others age, love, and laugh. But, immortal as he is, he quickly found there was little reason to keep shouldering such baggage moving forward. He serves a new purpose now, a higher calling. He stopped visiting soon after and felt like a man revived. Which he was.

Spring means nigh nothing to the people of Bilgewater, save for the fishermen who are promised a bountiful hunt. Pyke is, accordingly, tailing a larger fishing ship, a safe call in the danger broad daylight, when he sees it, far in the distance, exactly where he prophesied it’d be: sitting behind an erratic array of rocks that protrude like spikes from the ocean, where no small vessel would dare traverse. In the distance sits the only ship ever commandeered by one Captain Sarah Fortune, a woman whose name had been thrown around with awe since before Pyke had met death. He has not known fear nor cold in ages, and he still shivers. It’s exhilarating, this hunt, for reasons unclear. Not yet.

As a testament to his familiarity with his profession, Pyke waits until well past nightfall to make way onboard. Before he’s even embarked it, Pyke takes notice: the ship is a beautiful one, truly. Its sails are clean and flat, dangling from where they’ve been loosened on the masts. Boards are secure and clear of signs of decay, a sailor’s worst nightmare. From the outside, it appears brand new. An honest shame.

He hoists himself up into the cavity of a lifeboat before standing, surveying the deck for any signs of watchmen or the crew. It’s dead quiet. Pyke slips aboard, the wood below his feet sturdy and silent.

It’s eerily silent for a fully-manned vessel—one would expect the usual shrill ring of a drinking song or the scuffling of a fight below deck, accompanied by laughter and voices overlapping. Rather, Pyke finds a well-ordered deck with every imaginable luxury and commodity a man could want: barrels of ale stacked tightly upon one another, clean water taps along the length of the boat, lengths of rope looped neatly in its conveniences. Swords left in scabbards scatter the exit keep and empty-barreled pistols rest vertical against the gunwale. Whoever might man this ship is clearly not expecting battle. Pyke is aghast. What exactly does this woman do on her ship?

The only source of light in the misty darkness is an array of candles leading below deck. Some sort of sign. And, Pyke thinks, a trap. He takes great pains to snuff out any tripwires or loose boards, levers or hidden bulkhead doors. Finding none, following the lit candles becomes his next course of action.

The light ends not far in, coming from behind a sealed door. Pyke can hear a single voice ring out from behind, words rendered unintelligible by the thickness of the door. 

An ambush is likely. But Pyke has a goal in mind, and may he rot in hell if he backs away from a sitting duck now. 

Pyke steels himself, shoulder bracing the door. With mouselike subtlety, the door whines open a crack. He has to go more to see anything—he does, glancing upwards to check for laid traps. Just before he’s able to peer inside—

“Of course you can come in,” a woman’s voice calls out from inside. Pyke freezes. His harpoon is cold and heavy in his hand. He doesn’t breathe.

“I _said_ , come in, good sir. I am.. _thoroughly_ unarmed. On my great honor,” and, with a smile in her voice, “As a captain.”

Pyke tenses. He smiles beneath the bandana before making his way inside. 

The captain is reclined in a cushioned chair facing the door. Hair relaxed around her shoulders and hat retired to a nearby table, Captain Fortune is the spitting image of relaxation. The first thing Pyke notices is that she is painfully underdressed, lengths of skin visible beneath her sheer sleepwear. her red hair provides much of her decency. 

Unable to process the scene, Pyke stares. She looks at him with an impossible combination of disdain and composure. “I expected some manners from you, good ripper. Color me disappointed.”

He deserves that one. He speaks up, voice warbled with the usual low distortion. “Much like how I expected a crew, captain. Maybe some clothes.”

“So you _were_ expecting guards. Are you surprised?” Sarah laughs. Giggles, even. It’s impossibly girly. "Look. Word of captain-killing monsters gets around pretty fast in my city. That's how things work around here. I know you, you know me, you board my ship, thinking you'll see me dead tonight."

Pyke says nothing.

"You're right. That _is_ beside the point," The captain sits up a little. "If you expected resistance, you could’ve blown me to smithereens without even boarding my ship. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t work like that, missy. Your crew never crossed me, no.”

“And yet, I did? How strange, I don't think we've ever met.” Sarah pretends to think, and takes another sip of a drink Pyke didn’t even notice she was holding. It’s dark in color, likely strong enough to take down the thickest of men. “What if I told you, now, that they’re not here. There’s not a soul here but me. Can you blow me to pieces with good conscience now?” A pause. “Or is it the killing that gets you off, you sick ripper?”

Sarah stares him dead in the eye, and if she notices they’re glowing and thrumming with an impossible light, then she doesn’t say anything. It’s an intimacy he hasn’t known for ages—being treated and _stared_ at with the disposition of a first mate being scolded by his captain. Is he scared?

Nothing feels real.

“Mute now, are we? You are one strange assassin, love.”

“Nothin’s stranger than a lass dismissin’ her crew when she’s expecting an assassin on board.” 

“Said it yourself. They never crossed you. Why should they be here when we show down, hmm?” The captain stands, swaggering slowly over to Pyke where he leans against the door. Pyke is still as stone as he watches her take slow, calculated steps towards him. 

Her hands are empty. She’s unarmed as can be—her clothes couldn’t hide even the smallest of daggers, not with how they do little to conceal her figure beneath. He watches her lean to his right, and hears the door be shut and be sealed tight behind him. 

He should really kill her now. She’s obviously been drinking too much with how she waltzes in front of him, inching closer with each step, and things will go south if he doesn't act fast.

The sound of the door shutting and locking continues to echo in his head for several long moments. He hasn’t moved yet, Sarah smiles, turning her back to the door and coming to rest upon it. It’s quiet. 

“The stories I’ve heard about you,” Pyke starts, breaking the silence. Behind him, Sarah tilts her head in expectation. _What stories?_

“They didn’t mention you were a drunk.”

Sarah feigns insult. “Rightfully so. This is a special occasion.” 

Pyke turns to her. It’s his turn to ask the silent question. 

“Yes, we’re drinking to the day you almost killed the illustrious Sarah Fortune, and instead ended up with the best lay of your sorry life, ser ripper.”

The jade green of his harpoon is aflame with rage, and he’s pinned her to the door with one arm and staked his claim on her neck with the sharpened edge before she can even react. 

_Warm. She’s so warm._

The captain doesn’t struggle, or scream, or even frown. She laughs instead, the same hearty laugh as before. Something inside Pyke churns like butter. What is he doing?

Her head cranes up, face parting through curtains of long red locks. 

“I’ve survived my fair share of assassinations, love. It’s always been me or them. And I’m still here,” Sarah states matter-of-factly.

Pyke imagines fighting this woman here and now, himself armed to the teeth versus her who’s without a weapon, let alone decent clothing. Some skirmish that would be. It’s strange—the moment he entered, he'd already realized this would be different. She would be different. Miss Sarah Fortune will not die tonight, not by his hands.

Pyke turns the blade around in his hand and stabs it into the wall, leaving it lodged next to her head. Fortune looks at him with an amused but otherwise unreadable expression. She’s still pinned to the wall she’d been leaning on, but looks less like prey and more like the cat that caught the mouse. Pyke's been caught off guard.

_A cornered beast has nothing to lose_ , a voice warns in the back of his mind. It’s quiet again. Only the captain breathes—Pyke’s heart doesn’t beat anymore, and thus he has no need for air. Something’s aching inside, though. Where his heart should beat. It’s so quiet. 

With his back upright, Pyke would surely tower over her. But, crouched over as he is, they’re nearly the same height—Pyke closes the remaining distance quickly, moving one hand for purchase behind her head and using the other to guide her mouth to his. 

Sarah tastes like alcohol and nothing else. Her mouth is sinfully hot, in stark contrast to his eternally icy disposition. He’s careful for a moment, steeled for a kick to the crotch or a knife to the gut, but warm arms quickly wind around the back of his neck, tilting his head for another kiss, this time at a better angle.

Sarah has to break away for air. Haunted eyes meet hers. He sees her—really sees her for the first time that night. Her cheeks are wet with what might be tears mixed with dampness from Pyke’s skin, but she smiles, and oh Mother, is she gorgeous. He wants to take her by the hind legs, hoist her up against the wall, and make her scream for real. But he doesn’t.

She grins, teeth showing and all, exhilaration thrumming through her body. “I might cry if you don’t kiss me again, sir.”

“Pyke,” he corrects without thinking, and all but keens when she echoes it back at him like a mantra. He waits before kissing her again, feels her push back with equal fervor once, twice, three times. For the first time in ages he feels like he’s overheating. She’s so damned _warm_ —he can’t seem to get close enough. The temptation to rip through her nightclothes and experience her heat firsthand is strong, but his will is stronger, and he settles for running his hands up and down her back, to her shoulders and neck, wherever’s closest. She breaks away again and giggles, a lovely sound.

“Your hands are _freezing_ ,” She takes a step back, playfully pushing Pyke to take a step away. Before he can fully register what’s happening, Sarah’s got the hem of her nightshirt in hand. She’s barely got it pulled up over the beginnings of her chest before Pyke’s got his hands all over her again, and she’s laughing again, playfully shying away from the chill of his body against hers.

His will is weaker than previously thought.

After that experience, he has to reinspect his purpose once more—he has, after all, just let a captain survive, despite having her at his complete mercy. It decides that hurts his head to think it over for too long, and settles with the following conclusion: one captain may be allowed to life, if only for the sake of fulfilling his base desires as a man.

He sticks with that for now. 

Life goes on, and what was previously unheard of becomes routine. Captains continue to show up dead as per Pyke’s schedule. Captain Fortune remains untouched (by the hands of death, at the very least. She has a particular fondness for Pyke’s strong and calloused hands, which claim no such innocence) to the shock of the entirety of Bilgewater. Many who were counting on the infamous ripper taking her out are left disappointed, finding he’s refrained from acting where they themselves have found no success. Nobody tells them that he’s taken mercy on her in favor of what she can provide for him. 

Of course, he is not dull enough to think he is the only beneficiary in their odd relationship. Sarah has kept up on her end as well, despite not longer being at his mercy—in fact, Pyke’s not convinced she ever was. Vulnerable, that is. It’s as if she knew all along he would let her go, would take her as a companion rather than a trophy. As if the moment he stepped on the ship, he was under her spell. 

One empty night, after a bout in Sarah’s quarters, he says so. They’ve been on and off for months now, though time seems to warp when they’re together. An odd sensation, to say the very least. Perhaps the work of a witch?

“I’ve got no familiarity with magic, if that’s what you’re implying. Nor am I a demon.”

“A siren, maybe.” 

A long, theatrical sigh comes from Sarah, where she lays on the bed beside him. “So I’ve heard. If you’d like to compare me to those creatures of myth, be my guest. Though I’m sorry to say you’re not the first. Not nearly.”

He pretends to daydream. “Mm, I can picture it now. Bare on the rocks, singing the song of men’s desires, shirt sheer as clouds, whiskey in hand…” 

“Familiar, isn’t it,” She plays along. “Are you upset to know you’re not the first?”

She’s joking, likely. But Pyke does something with Sarah he doesn’t do anywhere else: he listens, really listens, like he wants to savor every word that spills from her mouth. And so he takes an extra second to consider how he wants to answer her. 

He supposes he hasn’t really thought about the topic much. Does it make him angry to know that Sarah’s got other companions, other men and women seduced by her ridiculous charm? Others that have felt her heated skin against theirs, the way Pyke anticipates and is never disappointed by each time they fuck? 

Pyke does not fear anything. Not since death became a thing of the past. And so, he is shocked when he finds he is too scared to put together a real response. So what if he is upset by the thought? What’s it to her? He settles with a cop-out: “If you can weasel your way outta death doin’ it, I can imagine it gets you out of lots of fits.”

“It does,” and the pure disappointment Pyke hears in her voice is startling.

He immediately turns to read her expression, but her face is masked by a veil of hair. It’s unlike her to be so blunt—usually she’d have a flirty anecdote, a joke to conclude their banter. Her eyes are closed. Pyke speaks Sarah’s language: ‘Playtime’s over. See yourself out.’

It seems like there’s something else she wants to say, but Pyke’s not going to ask. If he’s learned anything about her, it’s that she will tell her gospel when it is ready to be heard. And it appears tonight is not that night. He waits until she’s asleep to steal a closer glance at her sleeping figure (if he could count the freckles on her cheeks, he would), and snuffs out the bedside candle before exiting scene.

Pyke’s only slightly concerned that she’ll bring up the awkward confrontation the next time they’re together; he’s pleasantly surprised when she doesn’t and things return to semi-normal. What shocks him most about the whole confrontation is the amount of emotion Sarah’s able to draw out of him—when they kiss, he’s greedy, and claims her whole body with his hands. When they fuck, he’s desperate to get closer, holding onto her with desperation, encouraged by her begging and moans that ring out like music. It’s amazing, he thinks, he _knows_ , but he’s faced with increasingly startling thoughts—of domesticity, of romance, of _children_ , for the Serpent’s sake. It’s a conversation for another day, Pyke reassures himself. It was on the more exhausting side of one of his ventures. To make things worse, He hasn’t seen Sarah in a while, meaning he’s as pent up as a dead man can be. The last thing he wants is a long, drawn own conversation about the future before they’ve fucked at least three times. 

* * *

And so the two find themselves on that same night—Pyke’s returned a tad earlier than the time he’d promised Sarah weeks before. He finds his captain waiting in his makeshift quarters salvaged from the wreckage of a great ship, and surprises her with ghost touches to her skin and rum pushed into her mouth—it’s all very recent, surely not easily forgotten.

Yes, they’ve found that neither her nor Pyke can stomach menial talk for long when there’s other more physical activities to be had (though they enjoy their fair shares of teasing). But they are nothing if not painfully oblivious to one another’s thoughts when it comes to childish topics such as the idea of romance in a relationship such as theirs. Alas, it has been on the forefront both their minds, if only known to their individual selves. Despite how easily it comes to them to dance around it, sex is limited by both time and stamina, and the topic is an easy picking for a sex-dizzied romance-deprived captain.

“Is it absurd,” Sarah props herself up on an elbow, peeking out at Pyke beside her. She starts but doesn’t finish; for some reason, the words catch in her throat. Pyke answers preemptively.

“You know me, Sarah. Absurdity is an old friend.”

For some reason, that bolsters her confidence tenfold. “Would it be absurd if I told you you’re the only one?”

She watches him freeze. If he wasn’t already deathly still, he surely is now, and she’s got him pinned to the bed with her eyes. Pyke couldn’t slip away right now if he wanted to, which it seems like he does. Sarah’s tempted to voice it all: how she’s ready to have this talk, even if it makes them seem like teenagers asking to one another’s firsts—how she’s never felt seen more genuinely by anyone but him or seen anyone else more clearly than she does him—how she wants this to be more permanent than scheduled sex whenever it’s convenient. 

Neither of them are permanent people, she knows, but they are nothing if not creatures of habit. Sarah can do private, she can do exclusive. She wants to know if Pyke, the infamous bloodharbor ripper, the living fear of every captain in Bilgewater, can do it too. She’ll get it out of him, even if she gets the one answer she doesn’t want to hear. 

Pyke’s thoughts appear to race ahead on a similar track. She usually can’t quite tell what he’s brooding about, but the look on his face without the bandana makes him far more readable. 

“No, ’s not,” is his answer, and Sarah’s heart sinks for a moment before remembering the original question she’d posed. 

A jackrabbit thumps in her chest. 

He continues. “I haven’t either. Not once, since that night.”

Sarah’s look must be bewildered, because when Pyke turns on the bed to meet her gaze, he’s got a sort of unkind grimace on his face. 

“You don’t believe me.”

Sarah sits straight up in the bed. He’s got to know she’s serious about this. “I believe you, Pyke. On my life.”

Pyke swallows. He looks almost sad. “Are we really doin’ this, Sarah?”

Sarah cracks a smile. There’s something in his demeanor that’s told her he’s already committed to this. Maybe he’s been committed. She wants to cry. “Only if you want to. Only if you really, honest to the Mother want to.”

Pyke doesn’t have to remind her that he’s not going to be an easy man to love. He’ll disappear, she knows. He’ll have to go for long periods of time, putting Sarah back into how things usually were: lots of quiet preparations, laying low, and general scheming. But for her to voice something so explicitly means she’s meant it, and Pyke’s learned to be honored by the degree of trust she is bestowing him with at this point in time. Neither of them have much to go by—Sarah’s got herself one nice ship, a handful of a crew, and her looks. Pyke’s only got a harpoon and a vow for vengeance to his name. They have smarts, they have three lives worth of experience under their collective belts. Can they pull this off?

What in the Serpent’s beastly name are they doing here?

“I want to.” _I want you._

She does cry. “Pyke. Oh, Pyke.” _I want you too, damn it._

They kiss until it’s morning, not bothering to go any further—they’re not in any rush. Pyke just got back from a successful run, high on the kill, and Sarah’s off the hook with her crew for the rest of the week as they go abut haunting their usual spots on shore. Nobody will find them where Pyke’s got them settled, with everything they need on hand. What they don’t have, they’ll steal. What they need, they’ll take. Everything’s on the right track for once in their lives, and they’re not about to give up the ghost. Not yet. Not for a long while, now.

**Author's Note:**

> stream [ starbuck's complaint by the dreadnoughts](https://open.spotify.com/track/6D1dMhMZzCejKoCEeynLER?si=VwXILfRiRWGzp6W8cOoHVQ)


End file.
